


A Human Institution

by imahira



Category: O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000)
Genre: Humor, M/M, Religious Guilt, Sodomy Laws
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 19:11:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16561643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imahira/pseuds/imahira
Summary: EVERETTYou ever been with a woman?DELMARWell, I've... I—I got to get the family farm back before I can start thinking about that.EVERETTThat's right.Ifthen!





	A Human Institution

**Author's Note:**

> Even I hesitate to gift the world with John Turturro/Tim Blake Nelson erotica, so this will have to do

"Never did mean no harm to the workers at the Piggly Wiggly," Delmar muses one night, later than he has any business musing. "Gun wasn’t loaded or nothing. It didn’t seem much of a sin at the time, but I see now it was wrong, having had occasion since to fear for my own life."

It ain’t fair, Pete thinks savagely, that the one thing Delmar has the sense to fear should be one of the two things he fears, nor for Delmar to keep needling him over it when he, Pete, could be sleeping just fine right now, but he's learned to make allowances since the Flood—they never think of it but with the capital F—so all he says is, "Go to sleep, Delmar."

The Man—another capital—still keeps him up some nights, but Delmar's more liable to keep himself up pondering over matters philosophical, as Everett puts it.

"You wasn't in for murder, was you, Pete?"  _That_ opens Pete's eyes. "You never did mention. If you was, I reckon it was washed clean back when we was saved," Delmar adds comfortingly. "Not to mention you done your time for it—all but the two weeks."

"If Everett brings his brood by one more time, hopin' for a weekend alone with the missus at our expense, I might be." Pete wonders for a moment if the law has any point beyond keeping folk like Everett knee-deep in children. It seems to him even Everett's peculiar choice of wife might not object to some means of dodging baby number nine. Much as Everett swears the McGill conjugal bed is strictly law-abiding. But the Good Book says, of course, and Pete's found it safer not to second-guess that, nor the whims of the state of Mississippi. "Woulda got worse'n thirteen years for murder. Get some sleep, Delmar."

The Good Book and the state of Mississippi have a great deal to say on some matters, as he'd found out on the most uncomfortable evening of his life, when Everett, suffering from a relapse of lawyering, had brought the criminal code round to explain the details "veez-ah-vee the peculiar arrangement in which you two find yourselves."

_"Now you fellas know," Everett says, "I consider myself a forward-thinking man, bound neither by superstition nor by the prejudice of local busybodies who think there oughta be limits on a man's freedoms in his own home. Look to the beam in your own eye, that's what I say. Why, up in New York they can’t get enough of this certain—inclination you’ve discovered in yourselves. Moonshining or sodomy or whatever happens to float your boat, I say seize hold of it."_

_"Ain't no_ sodomy _going on round here," Pete growls._

_"Not yet, anyhow," says Delmar, surveying Everett's copy of the criminal code. "How do you suppose a fella would go about it?"_

_"This is a legal statute, Delmar, not an instruction manual. And my personal property, don't forget that. I only brought it by to remind the two of you that however much a man may hold sacrosanct his God-given freedoms, he's still got to reckon with Mrs. Grundy."_

_"Friend of your wife's?"_

_"That's a small-minded dig, Pete, and I choose to ignore it."_

_It hadn't been meant as a dig, but when Everett's set on being high-minded there's little can dissuade him. So Pete submits to a lecture on_ per os _and_ per anum _—"Pardon the French"—crimes against nature, unnatural carnal intercourse, and loopholes of the definition thereto as elucidated in_ State v. Hill (1937) _._

_"An' all that goin' on," Delmar reflects, once Everett's satisfied of their education, "while we was busy bustin' out of Parchman Farm."_

Penny's never offered much other than she supposes Delmar does need the minding. It's plain Delmar don't need _minding_ any more than Everett—needs less, in fact. Hell, he minds the McGill brood better than Pete or Tommy _or_ Everett. And that being the case, Everett's more'n likely happier keeping his mouth shut for once, and no lawmen have come knocking the door down yet, so Pete's put that out of his mind. Most days. 

"Ain't nothin' wrong with this," he says, loud enough to penetrate Delmar's philosophical bubble where he lies, inches away. "Ain't nothin' wrong with _me_."

"Course not, Pete," Delmar says easily. "That wasn't troubling me."

"Wudden troublin' me, neither." Lying's another sin, but easy enough to repent of. And Pete ain’t fond of lying to Delmar in particular, it's too easy and feels cheap, and he's here in the first place to see Delmar don’t _get_ lied to, not by no one. So when he does it, the repenting comes fast.

The lying _with_ ain't as easy to repent of.

_"Anyhow," says Everett, "it ain't been a hangin' offense in a century." His chuckle trails off uncomfortably._

It don't happen all that often, not by the legal definition, but the biblical wording is a whole lot more to the point than the statutes of Mississippi. _Thou shalt not lie with._ Well, ain't that every damn night, and a whole lot closer than he’s ever laid down with any woman? 

Pete don't go in much for reading, and this is why. Words are liable to linger in the mind like a bad dinner guest.

"Sodomy never seemed to me the worst thing folks got up to in prison," Delmar says, thoughtful-like.

"Hell do you know about prison sodomy?"

"Oh, not much personally. Didn't sound like it left no one hurtin' afterwards, though. If they was careful."

"Ain't the most legal thing folks got up to, neither."

"Most things is right in the eyes of the law, if'n the right person does 'em," Delmar observes. "That's one thing I've learned. And the Lord seems to abide by the same principles. Ain't no law nor commandment against frightenin' folk for their lives, but you kin figure out on your own it ain't the right thing to do. I reckon you can't judge a sin rightfully until it's been done to you."

_"It's been men taken it on themselves to punish me a whole lot more'n God ever has," says Tommy. "Unless it was Him actin' through 'em—but I don’t see how a body's s'posed to tell the difference. I seen the devil Himself, too, and I woulda taken him for a man just like a thousand others, if I hadn’t been waitin'for him apurpose. All's I know is, I mean to get some use out of **this** world before I leave it, if They can't be bothered to make things clearer."_

"You oughta get some sleep, Pete," Delmar says in the dark. "We can always go get saved again, anyhow."

Sleep comes, like the waters of salvation, to ease the mind a spell, and like the waters it rolls away and seems dried up forever. Delmar and the Lord above forgive, but the devil and the Law exact a price, and it ain't the hellfire he fears after all, not so much as the cold of a prison bed.


End file.
